


Sacrifice

by Nataruma, TheWormwood



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Amani, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Horror, Spirits, Trolls, Zul'Aman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nataruma/pseuds/Nataruma, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWormwood/pseuds/TheWormwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zaugreb accompanies Bala'zil to the Amani troll burial catacombs on All Hallow's eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacrifice

The last thing Bala’zil had said to him was “keep up”, like he was a gimpy pack mule that threatened to hold up the whole supply train. The Amani was about as chatty as he was enormous; if Zaugreb were counting, it was probably only the sixth or seventh whole sentence he’d gotten out of him. Not that Z had been particularly inclined toward pleasant chit-chat himself. He’d endured much of their group’s discussions with all the poise and dignity of a sullen four year old. Falengar had said as much (because Falengar didn’t believe in fairytale creatures like tact), and Zaugreb, pricked by his conscience, resigned himself to the fact he was going to have to hike in the middle of the spirit-forsaken woods in the dark and the cold with Bala’zil, or be marked a shirker.

And it was cold. Worse than cold, it was damp. Damp as the underside of a frog’s ass. Given that no one had bothered to mention this little stroll in the woods was going to take half the night, the hunter hadn’t bothered to drag on the sort of gear that would have warned off the chill. He’d long ago cinched the coarse patchwork vest closed against the night air, but it did precious little to keep the cold from nipping anywhere else. 

A recent rain had drowned the forest, leaving the footing soggy in places and downright mucky in others, and with the pockets of wetness came the scent of mildew, earth and pine. The fragrance of rotting vegetation wafting up from underfoot was heavy, sweet. Zaugreb sidestepped the puddles he could see, and sloshed through the ones he couldn’t. Between the puddles and the rain-soaked grass that lashed his legs, he was soaked to the hips before long. If Bala’zil shared the darkspear’s dismay, he didn’t say so. Zaugreb, intent on avoiding any further puddles glanced up to find the orange glow of the Amani’s torch scattering the spidery shadows of dead tree branches in the distance.

Mist crept up the trunks of the gloomy redwoods, grasping at the bark in places and creeping over the gnarled roots undulating throughout the forest floor. Here in Amani territory the pustulent scourge-corrupted trees of Tranquillien had lost ground to the old growth forest. No untended flower beds in cracked disrepair here, nothing but a wild tenebrous tangle. Shadows oozed like spilled oil, slithering along the undergrowth in the wake of Bala’zil’s solitary torch, nondescript beasts of gray, green and black.

He made almost no sound, but in the stillness of the noise-swallowing Amani forest, his careful strides sounded loud and uncivilized. Even the bats and other animals of the night seemed to have forsaken these paths. The quiet stalked them on all sides, poised to play upon the slightest chance of imagined threat. Naked flame shone off feather and bone.

The terrain sloped away beneath his feet; Zaugreb stumbled amid a snarl of tree roots. The ground raced up to meet him, and for several seconds, the troll stayed where he’d fallen muttering curses vast and colourful enough to encompass luck, rain, mud, tree roots and the entire Amani tribe. Hauling himself to his feet proved there was now more mud than not. Good. Because if there was one thing this little adventure needed, it was a nice cold mud bath.

Crack.

The sound, muffled through leaf litter, made the hunter’s ear twitch as he brushed at his now soaked vest. “M’comin…keep ya shirt on…”

No light greeted him when he glanced up. Darkness had swallowed up the torch and its bearer, leaving a forest painted in an inscrutable achromatic palette. “Shit.”

Navigating the steep grade into the ravine without the benefit of even the most watery moonlight was a challenge. Zaugreb kept a hand out for balance, letting it brush the trees as he passed, now and then using a trunk to steady himself. Rainwater had washed out much of the path here, and the clay beneath his feet was slick.

He became aware of the movement to his left slowly, distractedly. The soft hiss of wet grass amid the tree trunks, the shallow scrape of a foot against a rare dry patch. With still no sign of Bala’zil, the dark pressed down around him like a wet blanket. Zaugreb pulled up short, and strained his ears toward the sounds of pursuit. 

It was only a flash, a smear of grey only a tone or two lighter than its backdrop. A cluster of ferns shuddered at his hip, hissing as their stalks and leaves rubbed against one another. Zaugreb’s pulse picked up a canter.

“Bala?” It wasn’t Bala; even as the name left his lips, dying quickly in the cold air, Zaugreb knew it wasn’t the Amani.

Muffled by distance, the sudden yowl of a lynx and an answering roar shattered the otherwise deafening quiet. The shadows around the trunk of a nearby tree pooled; a smudge of movement again. A hand dappled by a rare moonbeam slid out over the bark, a glimpse of skin so brief it could have been a lie. The same shaft of light found the flicker of yellow eyes. They blinked slowly, then disappeared much as the flash of limb had.

Amani tricks. Zaugreb’s brain’s disgorged the theory with a frantic air, and the hunter clung to it like a burr. This was some sort of set-up, some test or joke or moldy ritual designed to fuck with him. Cold, muddy and growing increasingly disoriented by the varieties of darkness hemming him in, Zaugreb flexed his fingers and cleared his throat. “I saw ya. Come out.”

Only the quiet answered. The ferns had stopped tickling each other, and the cats in the distance were silent once again. That humming stillness seemed to grow larger than the pocket of forest surrounding Zaugreb, until the urge to burst it like a bubble rose up alongside his pulsing sense of unease. It was time to go now, yep, most definitely.

She was there.

He turned to find her greying the space between tree trunks at the path’s edge. She stood strangely, as if her limbs were an uncomfortable collection of items not functional in nature, but merely hung ornamentally from her torso. Dark paint made hollows of her eyes and an oily smear of her flat mouth. It glistened wetly.

The hunter’s breath turned to stone in his lungs. 

Her head jerked sideways. “The drums.” 

His heart set a mad gallop as its pace. Stubbornly, Zaugreb brushed off the notion this was some sort of trick, some ploy to make him look a fool and pulled it around his crumbling confidence like a security blanket. “What… what drums?”

She did not answer. In the silence that stretched stickily between them, she turned and was lost behind the trunk of a sentinel pine. 

Sick adrenaline flushed his veins, yet the hunter found himself freezing, like a stag catching a wolf’s scent.

“They’re coming.” It wasn’t that he felt the heat of someone’s breath on his cheek, it was more like a swirl of mist. Shadow licked his back and it was freezing cold.

“Drums…” If the voice had a source, his ears couldn’t find it. It seemed almost to drift up from below, an exhalation of the very earth beneath his feet. 

If it was a test, Zaugreb chose in that moment to lose, and was happy to do so. He ran. Branches clawed him, roots reached up like grasping hands, the cold stung his lungs. Where the fuck was that light? Zaugreb’s eyes raked the darkness for a hint of the guttering amber bloom. Light lurched into his field of vision, broken by the bars of tree trunks.

Bala’zil’s torch had grown friends; a quartet more lit the clearing the hunter stumbled to a halt within. The catacomb loomed out of the trees, a monolith of damp glistening stones. His back against that solid edifice, Zaugreb sucked in great lungfuls of air like a drowning man while Bala, torch light glinting off the polished brass ringing his tusks, looked on blithely.

“Well, if that don’t beat all. Ain’t never see ya move that fast before, boy.”

Zaugreb’s intellect took in the mocking tone, and decided to be irritated at being called ‘boy’ again later. “Somebody back there… All painted up, talkin’ ‘bout drums….” Breathing was still a going concern; it felt as if someone had jammed knitting needles between his ribs. 

“That so?” The guttering torches made a gold mask of the old Amani’s face.

“F’that’s one a’ya tricks-”

“Then it worked, yeah? S’no trick boy. Ya know full well, least ya should the veil thin tonight. Ain’t all sacrifices happy t’be chose in the end. Weak spirit like that, probably got so little strength, can’t do nothin’ more than live on in the last minutes of its fear.”

The darkspear, chest still heaving with the effort of catching his breath lifted his head to scrutinize Bala’zil’s face. “… Sacrifice?”

“Everybody make sacrifices boy. Sometimes, t’only ting ya got worth sacrificin’ ‘s ya life. Don’t mean ya end there on that altar, less ya too weak t’go on. T’spirits got no use for cowards.” The troll’s chuckle was like heavy stones shifting. “Maybe she see a kindred spirit in ya.”


End file.
